Identity Politics

I’d call Emily Douglas’ response to DeBlasio’s victory over Christine Quinn in yesterday’s New York City mayoral primary a bit unfortunate, if understandable to an extent. Even though it’s pretty clear she’s not herself comfortable with her entire argument, Douglas’ response basically comes down to the fact that it was time for a woman and a lesbian to be mayor and that women like Quinn or Hillary Clinton in 2008 can’t win over men because they had to play a careful game throughout their careers because they are women.

I’m going to offer this image as a counterargument to Douglas:

That’s not to say that women don’t face serious disadvantages in politics, even in 2013. It’s far easier for a man to have a long political career and rise to the top today, partly because those men started when the barriers were higher to women and partly because of still existent gender inequality.

The LGBT community voted DeBlasio over Quinn 47-34 because he is far more politically progressive than Quinn. At best Quinn was the 3rd most progressive candidate and was probably 4th. Why would progressives vote for her? To continue Bloomberg’s dream of turning New York into a playground for the world’s billionaires? The multimillionaires will have to settle for Brooklyn. To continue stop and frisk? Also, are all gays and lesbians white? Could non-white gays and lesbians be voting racial identity over sexual identity, especially if they see a greater threat to their bodies over the former? Of course.

We know more about why Hillary Clinton lost the primary in 2008. Although there was absolutely a sexist element to the coverage of the race, Clinton lost because she had over-imbibed in the centrist southern DLC politics of her husband and advisers rather than reading the state of the Democratic electorate desperate to overturn the policies of the Bush Administration and create a progressive nation (and hey, look how that turned out!). Christine Quinn doomed herself by being too close to the unpopular policies of a mayor who they could no longer tolerate. Hillary Clinton doomed herself by not being distant enough from policies that the Democratic base now rejected.

A women and possibly a lesbian will be elected mayor of New York when she provides the policy choices the voters are looking for. It’s never anyone’s turn. Except for the person who is the most politically progressive. In this case it might have been DeBlasio and it might have been Liu but it most certainly was not Quinn. Democrats voted on this basis.